Education promises to be the great equalizer. But that promise has all sorts of assumptions built into it. One is that everyone starts at the same starting line, when in reality, some kids show up to their first day of kindergarten knowing basic reading and numbers. Others show up to kindergarten having never opened a book. And in Monterey County, only 1 in 4 children are kindergarten-ready.
“Early exposure helps level the playing field,” says Monterey County Superintendent of Schools Deneen Guss. “When they enter school prepared with basic foundational skills, they do better long term. If they enter behind, some kids never catch up.”
That’s why there’s been a sensible effort to focus on those pre-kindergarten years, expanding early childhood education. One such effort is the Monterey County Preschool Service Corps, an AmeriCorps-funded program administered by United Way Monterey County since 2020. The $500,000-a-year program recruits, trains and pays up to 20 local people to serve in preschools, providing extra language and literacy support; the AmeriCorps members get useful training (and a potential pipeline into an early childhood education career, desperately in need of workers) and 64 students in 10 classrooms (this school year) get extra tutoring.
Irene Xirum Sangerman is a 23-year-old who spent four years after high school working as a waitress before deciding to apply for the program. The Salinas native now lives in King City where she tutors eight children in Head Start. The eldest of 30 grandchildren in her large family, Sangerman says she was always interested in becoming a preschool teacher. Part of her motivation to apply was to see if it was the right career fit, and it clearly was: “I fell in love with it,” she says. “The children are amazing, and the staff.”
Now, as the school year comes to an end, she’s proud of the strides her students have made; some can write their names. One boy started the year unable to speak clearly, and when his peers couldn’t comprehend him it would lead him to tears. “Now he speaks in full sentences,” Sangerman says. “When we understand him, he just gets the biggest smile ever.”
So it was personally crushing to Sangerman when she received word that the federal government was eliminating funding for her position.
“It’s been a pretty good year up until last week,” she says. “For the kids, it is heartbreaking.”
For the feds, it’s just the latest line item to fall to slash-and-burn spending cuts. Locally it means the end of funding Sangerman and nine others’ positions, plus a question mark about the $10,000 education award each of them were promised in the future.
The axe fell in an April 25 letter from Interim AmeriCorps head Jennifer Bastress Tahmasebi, written in bureaucratese. (“Effective immediately, the AmeriCorps award subrecipient(s) included in the attached spreadsheet is/are being terminated per 2 CFR 200.340(a)(4) because it has been determined that the award no longer effectuates agency priorities.”) The director of California Volunteers relayed the news to Katy Castagna, CEO of United Way Monterey County, two days later, noting that Gov. Gavin Newsom had already pledged to take legal action to stop the dismantling of AmeriCorps.
“We’ve gone from the New Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society to a federal government that gives the middle finger to volunteers serving their fellow Americans. We will sue to stop this,” Newsom said in a statement in mid-April.
Castagna and team hustled to find $25,000 to pay the 10 Monterey County Preschool Service Corps members for another four weeks. But the future of the program is unknown. “I am a very optimistic person but I am not expecting that this money would come back in time for next year,” Castagna says.
As for Sangerman, her plan had been to go to Hartnell College to study early childhood education, but now everything is up in the air. Instead she’s looking for a summer job doing anything – fast food, gas station. “It’s a bit frustrating,” she says. “I finally figured out what I wanted to do with my life.”
What she wants to do is help the next generation get a fair shake at life. It’s unsurprising, if disappointing, that this presidential administration sees that as unworthy.
(1) comment
The underlying philosophy of the Trump education cuts is to pass the buck to the States rather than the federal government. This is an excellent opportunity for our more local governance, e.g. State Dept. of Education, County, School Districts, etc. to get involved. Early childhood education is critical. In out modern age in the U.S., every child starting Kindergarten should be familiar with books, the English language, and the ability for basic reading and writing and numbers. The County Board of Supervisors should be involved in assisting on this.
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